That's it. Your homework is to JUST get the toolbar up on your browser.

STEP TWO:

Okay, WHAT to do with that toolbar?

For now I'll try to explain Why Stumble at all?

Let's say I just read a great post in a blog I totally love anyway. I visit it like everyday. But THIS post is better than usual. I actually laughed out loud. (No not LOL--the REAL kind).

I can run and tell all my friends on twitter. But that's only a few hundred of you. I can blog about it. But heck, that's probably less than I just told on twitter.

So what to do to help my bloggy friend who seriously wrote something awesome? Because when it's that awesome I want all of you to see it too, right?

I can go to StumbleUpon.com and register. After I have registered, I can go back to my bloggy friend's blog and 'Stumble' that post. Not the whole blog mind you, I click the title of the post I loved and then I click the 'Thumbs Up' button from my brand new Stumble Upon toolbar.

This will take me to a 'review' page. If I am the first one to 'discover' this post? Bonus! For me. Because I get to write the review that people will see when they are searching through The Stumble Upon site (This is called 'Stumbling')

So if you are first it's important that you follow some rules:

1) Leave a short but informative review of the blog. Quote from the post even.

2) Use as many tags as you can think of. Think synonyms here. If it was a post about a little baby on swings with great pictures... you could use:photography, photos, baby, kids, parenting, family, swings, pictures, cute, and aw shucks.

3) ALWAYS mark YES. For yes it's safe content, unless you are looking at porn again. If you mark no, the blog gets flagged for that and it's apparently hard to lose the flag?

See my Stumble Page {GoodnCrazy username) for examples of reviews and tagging I've used recently. If you aren't the first to stumble a post, great. Just leave a quick review and a couple tags and toggle the 'YES' button and submit. Easy.

Are you still with me? This is getting long. I figure only the die-hards are still sticking around.

But I promise.This is the fun part. If you can get enough stumbles on a post of yours, then somehow, magically that post can take on a life of it's own, grow wings or some other bad metaphor. The massive online world now will see reviews of your blog post and just might slip on over to see it. I've heard of Stumble Storms...where a good post gets thousands of hits because multiple people stumbled that post! (Never happened to me btw.)

Which brings me to, Can I Stumble My Own Post? You can, but it's tacky. It's better to ask a friend to stumble a post when you think you've written something amazing. After the friend 'discovers' your post, then you can hit the thumbs up on your post and even write a quick review. I've heard of people going back even to stumble the comments of a post, when the storyline was continuing there.

You can Stumble submit a photo as well. Just right click over the photo (after loading the post url only) and chose stumbleupon photo blog it!

Also, Can I Stumble a Post if I Don't have a Blog? YES. Just follow the steps above.

Is this all clear as mud? Bottom line. Stumble Upon is a way to find new blog content to read. And a way to get your content into a place where a lot more people might see it. Let me know if you have questions?

And....more homework.

Here are the blogs I stumbled into yesterday that were great. Some were totally new to me and some were not. But I stumbled a post from each of them. And not always the first post I read. I tried to find Sponge Worthy posts. (You do know what I mean?) Tell me which post of these blogs YOU found Sponge Worthy?

I love these info-tutes. I love the idea behind Stumble Upon, but you've got to be a serious blog reader to use it! I wish I had time to read more blogs because there are so many great ones out there. Keeping up with the ones I subscribe to is sometimes a challenge.

Hey Carissa. Thanks for mentioning my blog. I've started to sign up for stumble upon, but when I was installing it I pulled out because I was on my hubby's computer and he can't stand all the extra toolbars and things. Guess I have to go back and try again!

This was great ... and I totally got the Sponge Worthy. And now I feel even more honored that you stumbled my post. I think I get it ... but I wonder if I have the time and memory to do it. I just discovered Deli.ciou.us and am still trying to get that set up. Thanks for the info.

...And I'm not the only one. There are all these other zombie mommies walking around PathMark with a toddler in tow and no groceries in the cart, talking or attempting to talk on their cell phones. We keep looking at each other with these questioning stares, wondering...